


Our stars are all crossed

by jauneclair



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Long John Silver - Freeform, M/M, Oops, Post-Season/Series 03, Profanity, Thomas Lives AU, but no happy ending, canon-typical angst, dark!Silver, seriously I don't know where this came from
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-15 23:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8077600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jauneclair/pseuds/jauneclair
Summary: John Silver can’t suffer Flint’s ghosts to live.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there, awesome new fandom! So as much as I would like to write beautiful Silverflint fluff, you get...this...instead. Un-beta'd.
> 
> *places fic offering at your feet*
> 
> *backs slowly away*
> 
> (Crit is always appreciated!)

It's a pretty shit prize, all things considered. Barely enough supplies to tide them over until the next raid, but just enough that the men's voices carry a touch more raucously over the desks as they haul the cargo onto the _Walrus_ ; then there's the matter of the passengers.

The wind started to pick up right after they boarded her. Now the gale blows strong and steady out of the east, sweeping clouds over the sun. John's skin itches with it - he remembers all too well the ship-killer they faced only a few months ago, and everything that came after it.

DeGroot is hovering at his shoulder, and John knows the feeling isn't his alone. The captain is in his cabin, but he's not likely to stay there if they tarry – the man’s preternatural sense for wind and water and wherever the fuck they need to be next won't permit it. Still, at least Flint's been persuaded to relinquish command of the vanguard, at least occasionally; persuaded that he doesn't need to personally oversee every last detail of the boarding. His newfound trust in one John Silver might have something to do with it.

Not without effort, John reorients his thoughts away from Flint. He has to deal with this prize, the ship's defeated crew, and the two men they found bolted inside the captain's cabin after the men took axes to it. The pair of them look like the well-sprung English scions that the merchant vessel’s captain proclaims they are (as if John would know). But the _Walrus_ crew has never been in the habit of taking hostages, and now they're in the middle of a fucking war - that these gentlemen had planned to sail blissfully on through.

Still, John listens as the idiot merchant captain prattles on about his wealthy passengers. He keeps one eye on the men from the _Walrus_ hauling the loot, and nods at the appropriate intervals – such as when the man takes a breath before launching into another round of and-won't-you-get-a-handsome-ransom-for-it (and its unstated plea, oh-please-reward-me-by-letting-me-keep-my-skin-on).

In what feels like another life now, John Silver was an opportunist. Part of him still is, and sympathizes, which is what makes him say,

"The manifest," before the other man can continue.

The man's face goes blank, as if he hadn't expected to be successful enough in his constant cajoling that John might actually be contemplating his plea.

John repeats himself and receives a bumbling answer about the logbook in the captain’s quarters.

"Dooley," he sighs, “take over here.”

He leaves the merchant captain with the rest of his captured crew. Joji is standing guard over the captain’s cabin and the men in side. John gives him a brief nod as he passes.

The logbook is sitting squarely in the middle of the desk, as if anticipating John’s arrival. He scans through the list of crew, to where there is an addendum at the end with two names. The first is Henry Barlow, which is an unfortunate coincidence. It sets John's skin to itching again, so when he looks down at the name that follows –

_Thomas Hamilton._

He forgets to breathe momentarily. Flint's ghosts are so potent that they're real.

John refuses to be threatened by the dead.

He whips the ledger closed and tucks it under his arm before approaching the two men sitting a little apart on the captain's cot. One is medium-sized, brunettish; the other is tall, blond, blue-eyed. He isn't young; but he looks too young to look so old.

Flint has never described to him what Lord Thomas Hamilton looked like, but John _knows._

It's just the three of them alone in the cabin. The merchant vessel rocks in the seas. All John can hear around him is wood creaking, so loud in spite of the drum of his heart in his ears.

"Thomas Hamilton?" he asks anyway, just to be sure.

The blond man nods. There is always a chance, John thinks, that it is all a terrible coincidence, that the outcome he foresees can be averted...

"This is my brother-in-law," Hamilton goes on. "I've only recently been released from - well. My wife, his sister, died in the Charles Town massacre. We were hoping to recover her body."

A thousand questions wage for dominance in John's mind, starting with who orchestrated Hamilton's release from Bethlem and who wrote to him about Mrs. Barlow's desk all the way down to Marcus bloody Aurelius. John's breathing out through his nose, and he knows he need to get a rein on himself but his thoughts flick from _Flint_ to _Hamilton_ to _Flint_ like a switch in the wind.

Will Flint say fuck-all to his war, knowing Hamilton is alive? Will he say fuck-all to John? And how can Hamilton hope to understand this thing inside Flint, this darkness that he and John share – could he? Would he? Or would his censure send Flint spiraling back down on a path even more removed than the one he walked after the death of Mrs. Barlow?

The worst part is that Hamilton is smiling at him, ever-so-slightly, as if to appeal to John’s higher self.

Well, John has given up his gold and his leg for the crew, for Flint; but at heart, he is still a fundamentally selfish man.

***

When he emerges, he locates the vessel's captain again and shoots him through the cheek, to silence his mouth. John, of all people, should have known that words can be tethers, even when their meaning is not immediately clear.

The usual shocked silence follows. Before the smoke clears, he turns to DeGroot and says,

"Sink this ship. No survivors."

He will have to explain, later, to Flint and the other captains, why he passed up on the opportunity to add these men to their crusade. That, he’ll deal with later. For now, the crew will abide it. They will, if they want to continue to live in love and fear of Long John Silver.

He waits until the tattered sails have completely vanished beneath the seas, even as the _Walrus_ sails away. Only then does he put the spyglass down, loosing a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

Twilight is spreading her dusky orange wings by the time John sees the last of the cargo safely stowed. Flint will be in his cabin. John needs to see to him, too.

"Everything all right?" the captain asks when John comes in, unannounced. He throws the bolt closed and crosses the room, circling round the desk behind which Flint is seated. Flint doesn’t otherwise look up, marking coordinates into his log. Standing behind Flint's chair, John's hands are drawn to the captain's body like a compass needle to North. He slides them over the hard planes of Flint's chest, his right hand catching Flint's nipple and twisting it through the coarse fabric of his shirt.

Flint gasps, arching into it. Then he relaxes back against the chair, the wood groaning. The two of them have been at this long enough that John can predict that little smirk that will creep over the captain's face, which manages to be smug and fond all at once.

"I'll take that as a 'yes,'" Flint says, and oh yes, the smile will be there.

Normally, John would be more amused - amused, and still a little astonished, at fearsome Captain Flint, smiling at him - for _him_ \- without malice. But tonight...

Flint mustn't guess, John knows. He mustn't ever guess, though John did right by him.

It's a kindness, he thinks: James McGraw and Thomas Hamilton might have been lovers, but Captain Flint and Hamilton must never meet.

But that's not why, if he's being honest. If he can't have riches beyond measure, if he can't have his damn leg back, then he will have this - all of this. The respect of the men out there is his. The love and fear they feel in their hearts for him is his. James fucking Flint is his.

He slides his hands up: under the captain's coat, pushing it away from Flint's shoulders. John's fingers dig into the tense expense of muscle there. Flint lets out a small groan, eyes fluttering closed. His head falls back, slightly, his grip on the pen in his hand loosening. His eyes are soft when he opens them again, blinking up at John.

There might be something of the man Flint used to be in the way he looks at John, or there might not; but he only looks at John in this way, even when John has spots of blood on his cheek.

"Come to bed," John says, and Flint takes his hand and follows like John's been leading them there all his life.


End file.
